Official data issued recently shows that Sri Lanka’s Gross Domestic Product growth rate for the third quarter of 2017 has been estimated as 3.3 percent, lower than the 4.6 percent achieved a year earlier.
GDP for the third quarter of 2017 at constant (2010) prices reached Rs. 2,351,384 million and the GDP reported for the third quarter of 2016 was Rs. 2,276,896 million, the Census and Statistics Department (CSD) said in a statement.
During the third quarter of 2017, the services activities continued to expand by 4.3 percent, while ‘industrial activities’ recorded a marginal growth rate of 1.9 percent.
However, overall agricultural activities have reported a negative growth rate of 3.3 percent in the third quarter of 2017, which the lowest growth rate in third quarter series, since 2010.
The agriculture sector of the economy has been affected badly mainly due to the unfavourable weather (severe drought as well as heavy rainfall) that prevailed during the past two years in many districts.
Industrial activities, which shared the GDP by 27.8 percent at current price, has continued to expand further at a rate of 1.9 percent.
Among the industrial activities, the construction activity, which corresponds to the second highest share (7.4 percent) within the industry sector, grew by the rate of 2.6 percent during this quarter when compared to the third quarter of 2016.
The overall manufacturing activities have grown by 2.4 percent during the third quarter of 2017.
The manufacture of textiles, wearing apparel and leather related products is the second largest contributor to the overall manufacturing industry, reported a growth of 7.9 percent.
Among the three major activities, the services activities which gave the highest contribution (56.3 percent) to the GDP, has grown by 4.3 percent during the third quarter of 2017, when compared to the same quarter in the year 2016.
The performance of the services sector was underpinned specially by the sub activities of financial service activities, telecommunication, human health activities, and insurance which reported significantly higher growth rates of 19.6 percent, 19.5 percent, 19.3 percent, and 10.9 percent respectively.